Demon Summoning 101
by Atolm2000
Summary: A small bit of trouble at the magic academy in Geo. I do still have the fic request in my inbox I just need toget my copy of the game back from being borrowed. :P


Demon Summoning 101 Demon Summoning 101   
Atolm2000   
atolm2000@hotmail.com   
*I stake no claim to Legend of Mana, Kathinja, Mephianse, etc., etc., or the cameo guest at the end. I am not Squaresoft.* 

The weather was bright and fair, and not one of the citizens of the prosperous city of Geo was aware of the danger brewing at the Magic Academy. Oh, it wasn't that rare of an occurence for a spell or experiment to go wrong. A botched spell of Thesenis's had left the city filled with Shadoles for two weeks, who had proved to be more than a little bit of a nuisance, and was known for a long time as the worst spell-gone-wrong to have come out of the academy. A few mischievious Shadoles, however, were nothing compared to the trouble being plotted deep beneath the city, in secret chambers underground.   
  
The library bookcase slid back down and "thoom"-ed into place behind a lone sorceress. The secret door sealed tight; with no more light from behind, and not a trace of it from ahead, the tunnel was filed with absolute darkness. Then, after a few seconds, a sphere of flame appeared in mid-air, illuminating our heroine.   
Holding the flame was a stern figure, her unkempt hair seeming almost a second, darker set of flames in the blackness. She wore steel gray and dark red, and was a rather alien figure, with scales covering parts of her body, a serpentine tail, with reptilian clawed hands and feet. Despite how dangerous she could be – she was, after all, half-basilisk, although that fact wasn't really known outside the school – she was one of the more popular professors among the students, which probably explained the cry from beyond the secret door – "Be careful in there, Miss Kathinja!"   
"I'll be fine, and I'll be back in school on Gnome Day. Go get some fresh air! Honestly, Brownie, you spend far too much time in this building." She stared back at the closed door, which had no opening mechanism on this side; from here, she had to leave via one of the other exits, get someone to open the door for her, or blast it open, if desperate. She didn't much fear the latter. She had been in the catacombs before when helping Thesenis with research. Granted, she didn't know the tombs as well as the other professors; she preferred to spend her days off in the open-air cafe/tavern in the fruit market, where she could enjoy the sunshine and forget about work for a while.   
The tunnel wound on for almost half an hour, coiling deeper and deeper under the city. The only sound to be heard was the clicking of Kathinja's claws on stone. The tunnel straightened out, then abruptly stopped at a gateway flanked by two huge and vicious-looking wingless gargoyles, each easily three times her size. She paused at the entrance to the gateway chamber, then slowly advanced. She only made it halfway into the chamber before both gargoyles snapped their heads to glare at the intruder, ruby eyes blazing. The rightmost one spoke, a rumbling voice of thunder and grinding earth.   
"WHO DARES DISTURB THE GUARDIANS OF THE FORBIDDEN TOMBS?"   
Unruffled; Kathinja glared back at the gargoyle, who swiftly lost the impromptu staredown, largely because the stone beast was well aware of her sometimes half-controlled ability to force things to explode with her gaze. (Being stone now, it didn't have much fear of petrification.)   
"Eh, shut it, you know who I am. You seen Mephianse or any of his students pass this way?"   
"NO, LADY KATHINJA. IF THEY ARE HERE, THEN THEY USED ANOTHER ENTRANCE AND HAVE NOT DISTURBED ME."   
"Great. He hasn't checked this path, so I'll have the element of surprise on him. Fine then, open the door."   
"THOU ART STALKING LORD MEPHIANSE AS A FOE?"   
"He's researching summonings, and being Mephianse, he had to pick the most hopelessly grandiose and dangerous way to test his new knowledge – he's decided to summon –" Here she lapsed into a rather excellent impression of the solemn and powerful professor – "A Demon of Destruction, of Limitless Power.' So, yeah, I'm down here to stop him."   
"I SEE. PASSAGE IS GRANTED, LADY KATHINJA."   
The heavy stone doors ground open on a 10' wide passage, the floor covered with loose flagstones. Kathinja paused at the doors, then launched into a performance that looked like nothing so much as a game of hopscotch across the rocks. Each flagstone had a small symbol on it, and as she paused on each stone, she quietly recited the pattern under her breath. "Wisp, Shade, Dryad, Aura....Salamander, where was Salamander...ah, yes, three stones right, and Gnome, Jin, Undine, and back to Wis-" Just as her claws touched down on the stone, she practically heard Thesenis's voice echoing in her head, a memory of when her mummified friend had explained the pattern as Kathinja first hopped from stone to stone, Thesenis flattening to a shadow and moving between stones that way as she spoke. "It goes through all the spirits of Mana once, then reverses – when you reach Undine, it goes back to Jin and so forth, going back and forth through the sequence until you reach the end of the tunnel. If you mistake the pattern, then it sets off all the traps in sequence, all the way down the tunnel. It's a rather unpleasant spectacle when that happens." Then the stone clicked downward, and there was a silent moment as she balanced tip-toe on her claws, standing on one foot on the fateful flagstone. "Damn."   
A flurry of movement followed. The first trap to go off was a guillotine blade dropping straight down on the Wisp-marked flagstone, barely missing the tip of Kathinja's tail as she dove forward, already shoulder-rolling under a volley of arrows aimed chest-height, and doubtless poisoned. Then came a leap as a spinning saw-blade passed out of the wall at ankle-height; it continued moving forward for ten feet straight, with Kathinja nimbly dancing on the blade in a vicious circus balancing act. Then the blade moved back into the wall, forcing her to put one foot on the wall for leverage as she dove through a torrent of flame pouring up from the floor. She barely landed on the other side when a crazy pattern of spears came down from the cieling and up from the floor, forcing her to dodge back and forth across the floor. The last spear had just chinked into the floor when Kathinja realized she had reached the point where the tunnel abruptly narrowed to five feet wide and began sloping downhill. She swiftly learned why as she launched into a dead sprint, barely avoiding the boulder that smashed down where she had been standing when the spears quit coming. The tunnel zigged and zagged a few times just to make it harder to keep ahead of the rumbling boulder – it occured to her that it was such a cliche trap, a boulder coming after you, and she resolved to talk to Thesenis about switching that trap for something more creative, as she suddenly found the ground under the front half of her claw not there anymore- a deadfall. She made the unexpected leap rather impressively, jumping a good fifteen feet forward; unfortunately, the floor fell out in an eighteen foot span. In grasping for the opposite ledge, she only succeeded in clawing the pit wall just below the ledge, as the boulder dropped off just behind her, both falling into the abyss. She briefly thought of her students, of her fellow professors, of the incident just a week and a half prior with Mephianse in the desert, of all the things in the world that she had never really bothered to get out and see, and came to one conclusion about her predicament – "This sucks." That conclusion was reached at about the time a monstrous SPLOOSH came from the boulder, with a slightly smaller splash into the swift underground river from our unfortunate professor.   
  
Claws pounding sand, struggling against a conjured desert wind as it subsided, she paused only briefly to make sure her unexpected ally was alright, then made straight for the clearing in the desert where two green-robed students stood by a monstrous apparatus, overseen by a tall, imposing figure that stood on a sand dune that only half-buried some huge and ancient beast skeleton; a figure swathed in robes of brown and red, with a deep golden yellow scarf wrapped around his feline face, blazing yellow eyes cutting through the desert night, ears perked up in anticipation of victory, horns curved back behind him keeping a mane of dark red-black hair in check, he turned to face Kathinja and her unfamiliar companion with a sweeping gesture at the strange and huge cannon – "You're too late! Now, I shall make the stars fall from the sky!"   
The apparatus triggered with a thundering report that echoed all the way to the Norn Peaks, as a multitude of flames – shooting stars? Streaked up out of its mouth into the sky, where they briefly vanished, followed by an impressive, even beautiful, display as bursts of color and light covered the sky, visible all across Fa'Diel, turning the desert night briefly into a multicolored dawn as Mephianse inadvertently rediscovered fireworks... 

...and then Kathinja sputtered awake, sopping wet, cold, spitting out brackish water, jarred conscious by something jabbing her in the side. Glaring up, she found the nuisance to be a trident, in the hands of a bizarre figure – slimy green and yellow scales, bulging eyes, an atrophied fish-tail, two clawed legs half-formed from fins, with similiar arms clutching the trident.   
The sahagin poked her again, at which point she snatched the trident, yanking the fish-man off his feet and flat onto his face, then levered up on the trident and planted one taloned foot on the fish's back.   
Jabbing the overgrown guppy slightly with the trident, she glowered and growled, "Listen pal – if you don't want to be a statue decorating the academy, you'd better give me the respect I deserve, and answer me quickly. Where the Hell am I?" The fish spit out bubbles and struggled. "Fine, object lesson. See that big crab over there – yeah, the one big enough to be a threat to poor humans, that's hoping to get the leftovers of your little scavenging expedition?" She poked forward with the trident, catching the crab's attention; the beast came forward, pincers out, and as it did, it made eye-contact, which was a mistake. The sorceress's eyes glowed briefly, and sparks outlined the crab as it became a perfect statue of a crab. "Now, where am I?"   
It sputtered for a second, then spit out, "glg-glg-Ma-dore-ah!"   
"Great. Good for you. Here's your pokey stick, now go on and leave me alone!" She dropped the trident in front of it, and stalked off toward the tunnel leading up.   
The tunnel wound around randomly as natural caverns tend to do, then opened into a broad chamber. She could already smell the ocean, as salt water dripped from stalactites and pooled in the ground. Had she cared to notice, it was a rather gorgeous cavern, sculpted for centuries by the nearby ocean, delicate salt florettes decorating the walls like summer snowflakes. Right now, she was more annoyed by the trio of oversized crabs intent on having her for lunch.   
The explosions echoed all the way to the surface, and made such an impression on the other hostile denizens of the caves that while a few of them showed themselves, none quite dared to challenge the drenched and irritable professor. This was all the better for Kathinja, whose only thought was getting back to Geo and stopping Mephianse, assuming she hadn't already been delayed too long. 

So it was that, about half an hour later, a still slightly-dripping figure came along the white sand beach into Polpota harbor. She wordlessly continued straight up the stairs, past the outdoor restaurant, and straight through the resort hotel, pausing at the entrance to the small open-air market when she saw a rather familiar (and short) set of green student's robes, teetering under a pile of seashells, jars, odd crystals, and various other potential spell components. She stopped right in front of the student, also in the middle of a rather large blind spot. It was to the student's credit that the boy only bumped Kathinja without dropping the load of stuff.   
A blue-eyed face tentatively peeked out around the mountain of stuff, and found himself staring at a familiar pair of red-clad knees, scaly where the cloth didn't cover them. Continuing up, he stopped just short of the professor's face, instead nervously focusing on her chin.   
"You're a little far from Geo, Thyme, and you aren't one of the students out selling minerals the academy has no use for."   
"M-miss Kathinja!"   
"Uh-huh. You know, we haven't seen you in a couple days, which leads me to believe that yet again you've gone off with Mephianse on one of his insane experiments, eh, Thyme? So what are you doing all the way out here?" She kneeled down to be on eye level with the boy, which only made him more nervous.   
"M-m-mister Mephianse sent me out t-to find some things he n-needed for the spell an-an-and didn't have there....please don't make my head explode..."   
"So he hasn't summoned anything yet?"   
"N-n-n-noo...."   
"That's good. You know, you can relax – I haven't blown up or petrified any students – yet. Just drop that pile of junk, or better yet sell it off, and get back to Geo where you belong." She stood back up and walked away, not really bothering to watch if the student carried out her instructions. Thyme was in on most of Mephianse's experiments and expeditions; he had even been the one who touched off the fireworks display in the desert. If the boy was all the way out in Polpota Harbor gathering components, then she had more than enough time to stop Mephianse's experiments, even if the kid did bring the components back to Mephianse.   
As she left, she was stopped by another young voice from a corner of the market.   
"Miss Kathinja- is everything alright?" She glanced over her shoulder to find blue student's robes.   
"Yes, Cayenne, everything's fine. You've been doing well out here. Keep up the good work and enjoy the weather out here, 'k? I'm heading back for the academy."   
"'K, Miss Kathinja – good luck!"   
"Thanks, Cayenne! You too!" She waved back far more cheerfully than she actually was as she headed for the road back to the rest of Fa'Diel. 

Not far out of Polpota, Kathinja found herself hopelessly lost among the rolling hills. She knew about which direction Geo was – south and east – but that was about it, and it really didn't help her with the roads any, as she didn't really feel like going straight *over* the rough and rocky hills. She had been so wrapped up in getting there quickly that she had taken a wrong turn somewhere, and the road had grown unfamiliar.   
She was muttering to herself as she walked on, cresting a tall hill. "So, if I go straight west, I'll hit Lumina, where I could probably get help, but then I'd be taking time off from heading for Geo...Straight east should be the Ulkan mines, and that'll be no real help, except that it's straight north of Geo...South's the jungles, I certainly don't want to wander in there and wind up pixy-led....but this road is going straight south...." It was about then that she looked up and saw a green-clad centaur pausing in a clearing to study a map. A red feather curved back from a broad-brimmed hat, and he had several small bags hanging off his flanks, with a lute among them. A travelling bard, perhaps the perfect person to ask for directions.   
She scrambled down the steep hillside. "Aaah, excuse me sir, you wouldn't happen to know the fastest road to Geo from here, would you?"   
The bard turned quickly, slightly startled. "Hm? Geo?"   
"Yes, I have some business there, and I took a wrong turn and wound up a little lost, so I'd appreciate it if you could point me back there."   
"It'd be my pleasure to guide you to Geo! I am Gilbert, the Poet of Love!" He bowed deeply, as somewhere deep in Kathinja's mind, a bunch of little warning lights began blinking. "ah – Kathinja. Professor at the Geo Academy of Sorcery."   
"Lady Kathinja...I'm honored to meet you. We're in luck, the fork just ahead of here leads almost straight to Geo."   
"That's...great...I really need to get there yesterday, y'know?" She started walking; the sound of centaur hooves just behind and to her left wasn't lost on her. "Don't you have somewhere to go, something to do?"   
"I have no other business than to be by your side." The warning lights began blinking a little brighter, and were joined by a small siren and a little golem voice repeating, "Danger, Miss Kathinja! Danger, Miss Kathinja!"   
"Rrrriiight...so how long do you plan on following me?"   
"I could walk in your footsteps for eternity, baby." On that last word, the warning lights exploded, the siren blared louder, and the one little golem voice became a loud chorus, as Kathinja's heart skipped a beat (Not from affection, but about the opposite) and her feet skipped a step, sending her stumbling forward. Gilbert was there in a flash, helping her regain her balance. "Are you alright, m'lady?"   
"I'm....fine...just...fine." She quickened her pace a little and muttered, "Oh Goddess of Mana and all her eight Moon Gods of the Elements, what have I gotten myself into?" 

Several hours later, the sun was setting and the main gates of Geo finally came into view. When the rather odd conversation had died, Gilbert had resorted to singing, which to Kathinja's mind was merely adding insult to injury. Not that he was a bad singer; quite to the contrary, he had a nice voice, and was quite good. Kathinja believed that was perhaps the only reason he was still alive – she didn't see any weapons on him, he was too fluff-brained to know any magic, and too blind in the head to survive long in this world without at least one talent, which the Goddess had been merciful enough to provide. (As naive as he seemed, he couldn't last long as a merchant, he'd be taken for everything he had.) No, the problem was that most of the ballads were in Kathinja's praise. Some small voice commented that it was rare for someone to be competent enough musically to compose on the fly like that, since he hadn't even known her before that night and none of the melodies sounded familiar enough to be modifications of existing ballads. That voice was swiftly clobbered by Common Sense and Dignity, then drowned out in its last whimperings by the golem chorus racing back and forth with their alarm sirens.   
As they entered the darkening city, Gilbert damped down the sound to a low murmur behind Kathinja. They were met at the gates of the academy by an impossibly slender figure obscured by mummyish robes of aging white strips, head hidden under an aging yellowish scarf of indeterminate original color; nothing was visible of the figure under the ancient cloth save a pair of deep-set eyes.   
"Kathinja! We haven't seen you in two days since you headed into the catacombs!"   
"Wait – this means tomorrow's Gnome Day, right? Damn...Thesenis, I still need to do something about Mephianse. Can you take care of my classes until this is over?"   
"Is that it – Mephianse on another of his experiments?" Kathinja nodded, and the graven figure sighed. "I'd be happy to help. I'll be taking over your classes until you're ready to come back. Good luck, Kathinja."   
"Thanks, I think I'm gonna need it."   
"And who might this fellow be?" Gilbert took several steps back as Thesenis glided forward to face him, leaning forward to study him quite closely. "If I didn't know better, I'd say you had an admirer."   
"A bard who helped me find my way here." She added, in a low hissed whisper, "Don't encourage him."   
Thesenis chuckled drily. "I see how this goes. Looks like you'll need a bit more than luck, eh? Well, I'm headed home for the night. Goddess be with you."   
"And with you." Thesenis melted off into the shadows in front of Gilbert, although an impossibly dark spot was visible creeping off down the road at a fast pace. Gilbert had turned to watch the splotch leave; Thesenis had clearly rattled him, a fact that Kathinja found oddly satisfying. "That was my good friend and fellow professor, Thesenis. She's not all that bad, when she's not accidentally summoning Shadoles or such." She allowed herself a slight fanged smile at the fear-edged blank look on the bard's face. "The passage down is in the library, this way. Shall we be going?"   
She conjured another small flame sphere to light the way through the darkened academy halls, but banished it on entering the library, where the lights were still on, Gilbert following a bit behind her. She came off the stairs and was examining the shelf for the trigger when a voice thundered behind Gilbert.   
"Who are you, and what are you doing here?!" Gilbert tripped down the steps with a cry, landing at the bottom with a thump and a despondent twang from his lute. Behind him, out of nowhere, was a floating two-dimensional creature, a brightly colored magical circle with an almost stained glass look to it, the arcane lines and markings forming a barely recognizable abstracted face.   
"It's alright, Nunuzac, he's with me."   
"Ah, Kathinja, so you are still around! Nobody's seen you for two days." Geez, had she really been out that long?   
"It's nothing. I'm just going off to stop another of Mephianse's grandiose and potentially incredibly destructive experiments. I might not be back for a few days, so I asked Thesenis to take over my classes while I'm away."   
"Thesenis?" The face rippled, colors going darker. "The students aren't going to like that." Gilbert picked himself off the floor, brushing dust out of his clothing and coat, then examining his lute to make sure itwas alright; the two professors were oblivious.   
"Yeah, well, it's not like I can just ignore this. They can stand it for a few days, and that's just assuming I get set back again; if all goes well, I should be back by morning, in which case she'll only be teaching my classes tomorrow, because I'm going to be dead on my feet after this."   
"Well, can't say I fault you for this; I suppose we'll be seeing you and Mephianse again whenever this is all over." The circle winked out of existence.   
"That was Professor Nunuzac. He got trapped between dimensions in the last war, so he can only manifest with a magic circle to represent his form."   
"This Academy has a very odd collection of Professors. This Mephianse that you're after?..."   
"What Mephianse ss like...picture a more civilized and cultured version of your average demon with a passion for sorcery and discovery that occasionally blinds his moral compass." Mephianse was human, but it was the fastest way to describe him she could think of.   
"...I see." The bookcase slid up, revealing the dark tunnel beyond.   
"You still going to follow me?"   
"To the depths of the Underworld, if need be." Oh well, it had been worth a try.   
And again through the winding tunnels, the sound of her clicking claws joined by the clattering of hooves and the sound of Gilbert nervously re-tuning and testing his lute. This time she didn't even slow down on reaching the two guardian gargoyles, although their sudden movement startled Gilbert into jumping back almost to the entrance of the chamber.   
"WHO DARES DISTURB THE GUARDIANS OF THE CATACOMBS?"   
"Ah, shut up. I really don't need this. Just open the damn door."   
"APOLOGIES, LADY KATHINJA. YOU AND YOUR COMPANION MAY PASS." The doors ground open yet again on the trap corridor, where Kathinja paused, a problem occuring to her as she tried to envision the centaur hopscotching across the pattern on four hooves. There simply was no way he could stand on only one flagstone, which meant they were forced to resort to a mad dash through all the traps yet again. She had only barely missed the last jump across the deadfall, and that only because it had come up so suddenly; she reasoned that Gilbert could easily make the jump as well.   
"All right, we have a small problem here."   
"What would that be, my love?"   
*twitch* "See these flagstones? There's a specific pattern they have to be stepped on in, and if they're not followed exactly, it'll trigger a ton of traps. Now, with the two of us, especially with you, there's no way we can follow the pattern. How're your reflexes?"   
"Ah, reasonably good, I'd guess..."   
"Great. Just stay right behind me and follow my lead, I've run this gauntlet before. Oh, and be warned – there's four bends in the tunnel after the boulder trap; after the fourth bend, there's an 18 foot deadfall we're going to have to jump. It's impossible to make if you're not expecting it, so I'll give you a heads-up about it now."   
"Understood." He looked down the tunnel uncertainly.   
"Alright, the first trap is a dropping guillotine blade five feet in. After that, hit the dirt, because there'll be a volley of arrows at about my chest height. Once past the arrows, a saw blade will come out of the wall; you should probably just stay behind that one. When the saw blade goes back into the wall, there's going to be a jet of flame going straight up, followed be spears coming down from the cieling and up from the floor. When the last spear hits the ground, before it even retracts, a boulder will drop out of the cieling; we'll need to outrun in through the tunnels, and then there's the deadfall I warned you about before. As far as I know, that's all of them."   
"Ah well, nobody lives forever, correct? May as well make the most of the time we have."   
"Alright, here goes..." She dashed forward, Gilbert clattering right behind her; he actually had to concentrate not to overtake her. This time the guillotine easily missed Kathinja's tail, but it clipped off the front of Gilbert's hat, as he screeched to a brief halt then jumped over it, keeping behind the arrows as they followed Kathinja. He tailed the sawblade at a nervous walk while Kathinja jogged along its edge, and wound up singed by the flames that Kathinja was one step ahead of, his hat crisped and blackened in places. He then joined Kathinja in dodging through the train of spears; Kathinja actually outran the spear trap somewhat, partly because she was already judging how much space Gilbert would need to dodge the boulder when it fell. Past the spears, she hit a dead run, outpacing Gilbert, who barely got ahead of the boulder when it dropped. Gilbert kept pace alongside her after that, still going slower than he could to make sure he didn't outpace Kathinja.   
Then the deadfall hit. Kathinja barely cleared it, catching the other side and dangling over; Gilbert, surprised despite her warnings, followed much the same performance she had done earlier, save that as he dropped past her, a serpentine tail wrapped around his lower body and a clawed foot caught one of his arms.   
They dangled like that for a few long seconds, as Kathinja marvelled at just how heavy a smallish looking centaur (he was only her height, after all) could be. She obviously couldn't pull both of them up by herself, and she couldn't just drop him either, which left only one option. "Gnomes of the Earth, come to our aid..."   
The ground trembled as the pit walls warped, lifting them up to the tunnel floor safely, then retreating back to their normal shape. Kathinja stood up as Gilbert stumbled to his four hooves, gazing back down the pit absent-mindedly, then looking back at her.   
"You saved my life! I am endebted to you, my love." He bowed deeply.   
Damn. She had missed her chance. It wasn't like the fall would've killed him; centaurs were famous for being a fairly tough race, and if she could survive it, it shouldn't be that hard for him. Plus, it probably would've gotten him out of her hair.   
"Hardly. You would've just fallen down into an underground river, then washed up in the Madora caves not far from Polpota Harbor. I missed that jump last time I came down here, that's why I was so far from Geo when I ran into you."   
"You sell yourself short, my dear. What you just did was noble and admirable, no matter what the threat truly was."   
"....Whatever. Let's get going."   
Another set of doors blocked the way, at least until Kathinja forced them open, not feeling like fumbling with whatever lock or puzzle sealed them. They opened on a large, round chamber littered with old bones, weapons, and armor. The golem chorus paused as Kathinja surveyed the room, then took up the warnings even louder. Sure enough, they barely got five feet into the room when both the doors in and the doors out slammed shut, and the bones clattered together, forming five vicious-looking skeletal warriors.   
"You can fight, right?"   
"I don't carry a weapon..."   
She should've known. "...fine, just do what you can and stay out of my way." The skeletons ringed around them and began to close in.   
The first skeleton to draw closer went down in a blast, a victim of Kathinja's own innate powers. Gilbert nimbly ducked out from between two others that smacked into each other, then untangled themselves and turned to chase the centaur further, as the remaining two flanked Kathinja. A fire spell took out the one to her left. The two facing Gilbert split apart, one attacking him from the front as he dodged, the other attempting to slip around behind him; as it raised its sword to strike, Gilbert kicked back, hooves denting the worn breastplate and kicking the skeleton back into the wall, where many of the bones broke apart as it fell to pieces. The second one facing Kathinja found its legs pulled out from beneath it by a scaled tail, right before the stones snapped upward in a pair of jaws, crushing it. She turned to check on Gilbert, who was still avoiding all of its attacks. Another small fireball finished it off.   
The doors reopened; the hallway they now faced was lined with torch sconces. Kathinja quietly counted off the sconces, then pulled down the fifth one on the right, causing that section of hallway to rumble, then jerk around, turning to another straight passage with a dead end to one side. "You seem to know these tunnels quite well, my dear."   
"Not really. Thesenis, and even Nunuzac, spend far more time down here than I do. But there's only one chamber large enough for what Mephianse wants, and this hidden passage is a shortcut Thesenis showed me."   
Another hundred feet, and a door at the end of the tunnel with a switch next to it; on pulling the switch, it ground upward, then slammed back down behind them. From the side they were now on, it was indistinguishable from the rest of the wall. To their right was a long and winding corridor heading to a pair of stairs up; to their left, barely fifteen feet, a huge pair of carved doors, normally rather quiet. Now, however, a pair of empty suits of armor armed with swords moved to block the doors.   
Gilbert was bracing himself for another fight. The sorceress, however, muttered, "I don't have time for this...", then called the walls on either side to smash together, crushing the armored phantoms. She walked forward and kicked the doors open.   
On the other side was a huge circular room. Ornate candle-holders stood on each point of a hexagram enscribed on the floor, rimmed with runes and arcane markings, with braziers on lower prongs of the candle-holders burning incense. A pair of blue-robed students looked up from tending the braziers. At the point nearest the door stood Mephianse himself, standing at a pedestal upon which was layed out an array of crystals in a strange formation.   
"This experiment's over, Mephianse." One ear ticked back, and Mephianse turned to the door. He didn't seem angry, or frightened; if anything, his expression revealed a dull irritation.   
"I'm afraid it's not going to be that easy to stop me, Kathinja." He held up one hand, a bluish black sphere of energy forming. Kathinja summoned one of her fire spells in response, but before she could cast it, a bolt of black lightning shot out of the sphere in Mephianse's hand; it enveloped her briefly, then she vanished.   
Gilbert danced to the side, then turned to face the professor, brandishing his lute as a weapon. "What did you do to my darling Kathinja?"   
"Nothing much. Just sent her to the Underworld. Hopefully this will keep her out of my way until my experiment is done." He paused, apprasing the bard. "And what do you plan on doing?"   
"I will stop you, for my love!" Gilbert charged forward, but a second lightning bolt easily caught him, banishing him as well.   
"Mr. Mephianse...did you just send him to the Underworld?"   
"No, I just sent him to the cafe in Geo. He doesn't look like the type that'd know how to escape the Underworld."   
"And Miss Kathinja?"   
"She's a smart woman. She'll be back soon enough. I don't think anything less would keep her away long enough for this spell to be finished." 

The blackness cleared away, and Kathinja found herself in some kind of underground chamber, with sharp stalagmites jabbing out all around her. A reddish glow illuminated the area from an indeterminate light source. She was about to question where she was when a bug-eyed blue and white striped phantom appeared right in her face.   
"Hey, Newly-Dead!" Great. A Shadole. Which made this the Underworld. "Yeah, you. Get up on yer feet, yer in the Underworld!"   
She picked herself up, quietly checking her pulse on one wrist – still alive. "I'm not dead."   
"Boy, if I had a Lucre for every time I heard that one, I could buy Fa'Diel. Yer dead. Accept it."   
"I got sent here by a spell, I'm Not Dead."   
The Shadole sighed, and closed its eyes as it ranted, "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Come on, Newly-Dead, ya gotta get a Baptism of Fire before you can hang around the Underworld and get anywhere but Olbohn's Office." When it opened its eyes, it found the room empty, and could hear claws on stone racing off through the Underworld.   
Kathinja barely made it around the corner when the Shadole appeared in front of her. "Listen, Newly-Dead, yer on our turf now, and you've got to do what we say. Now get yer tail over here –" It tagged her on the shoulder, the Underworld melted, then reformed in another chamber – "And take yer Baptism!"   
"I told you, I'M NOT DEAD!" She ducked past that Shadole, and dodged through a whole gang of them that had assembled in the nearby corridor. The only open staircase was one coiling down, so he dashed down there, finding herself in a hallway lined with doors, all closed but one. She flattened up in a doorway as a pack of Shadoles raced past in pursuit, then slunk along the wall toward the one open door, which had to be Olbohn's office. As she drew closer, she heard voices inside.   
"Sproutling...a home, just east....Domina..." She continued along the wall, pausing in a shadow next to the doorway. "It's going to be the catalyst for the regeneration of the Mana Tree."   
"So the new age begins."   
"Indeed."   
"I've somewhat expected this; even here in the Underworld, the pulse of mana has been growing stronger of late, far beyond any simple tide or astrological oddity."   
Right about there, a certain obnoxious Shadole appeared once again in Kathinja's face.   
"Now listen, Newly-Dead..."   
Kathinja ducked under it into the doorway, yelling, "GET AWAY FROM ME, YOU ROTTEN GRAVEWORM, *I'M*NOT*DEAD!!!*" Then absolute silence reigned as she turned and saw the inside of the office.   
At the desk was a strange plant-creature that could only be Olbohn, the Warrior, master of the Underworld and one of the Seven Wisdoms. Three blue eyes were fixed on her in an unwavering gaze. He had three pairs of arms; his chin was propped on one pair leaning forward, a second pair was crossed, the third pair rested on ther armrests of the chair. All the other detail she saw was nothing but an odd impression of dark green, tendrils, costume, with the creature under it all. In a far corner was the second person she had heard – a raven, slightly taller than Mephianse but thinner, wearing mostly yellow, but with a rainbow-colored cloak. A broad yellow hat, trimmed with red and blue, was pulled down over his face so that all that could be seen was the beak. His clothing was bright colored, but dusty and slightly worn, as from long journeys. Even one of Kathinja's newest students would recognize that figure as yet another of the Wisdoms – Pokiehl, the storyteller, the Herald of the Cosmic Truth, the archetype of the travelling bard of which her earlier companion was but a pale imitation.   
"uh...apologies..."   
Olbohn's eyes moved from the bedraggled half-basilisk, to the Shadole, and back to Kathinja. "What is all this about?"   
"This Newly-Dead's got the worst case of denial I've ever seen. We were tryin' to get her into the Baptism chamber for a Baptism of Fire, but she slipped away, and she keeps griping at us. She ran in here before we could catch her. Sorry about this Boss, I know ya didn't want to be disturbed while the Bird was here."   
"She's not dead."   
"Eh?" The Shadole blinked and drifted back a little in the air.   
"She's not dead. You can quit chasing her. I will deal with this. Go back to your business."   
"Whatever you say, Boss." The Shadole winked out of existence.   
"How do you come to be here? It's quite rare that we get a living person down here, and I think this is the first time I've seen one dropped here against their will quite so abruptly, and not by the Shadoles."   
"ah...I got sent here by a spell. I'm sorry if I've caused you any trouble."   
"This is no real trouble." Through the entire incident, she hadn't seen the Warrior's expression change once from flat calm. Olbohn lifted one arm off the armrest, but before he could do anything else, Pokeihl spoke.   
"I think the last thing she needs to see right about now is another Shadole. I'll take her up to the surface on my way out. Besides, I think I've already covered about everything that can really be covered; anything else would just be speculation, and I've also got some things to keep an eye on, to make sure the new age starts off on the right foot."   
"In that case, I suppose I shall be seeing you later."   
"That's about right." Pokeihl tipped his hat slightly to Olbohn as he walked toward the door. When he paused next to Kathinja, the Underworld melted away again, but this time when it came back, she was in a dark and desolate place of dead trees and tall dead grass, in front of a monolithic gravestone. The stone was adorned with an immense stone bat, and inscribed with writing of a language long dead.   
"How much of what was said did you overhear?"   
Kathinja started. "Eep – well, I heard something about a sproutling, at a home east of Domina, and it being a catalyst for the rebirth of the Mana Tree, and something about the beginning of a new age."   
"Then you know about all that can be known at this point. I'll be off to take care of things that need to be finished before this age ends, and I believe you have such business yourself." Then he simply wasn't there, and she was alone; it was as if there had never been a rainbow-cloaked myth standing in that spot, speaking quietly of coming events that would normally be thought of only as fairy tales, leaving not even tracks in the dust before the ancient gravestone of all that had died and ever would die. It took Kathinja some time to regain her bearings after the whole bizarre occurence, and for it to sink in that she had just escaped the Underworld, and at the same time run into two of the more elusive among the legendary Wisdoms that watched over Fa'Diel. When that was absorbed, she slowly returned fully to reality, and remembered just what she had been doing before getting zapped to the Underworld.   
"The last thing a new age needs is a demon on a rampage."   
She sprinted off down the path.   
  
To paraphrase the next few days, Kathinja made tracks as fast as possible, skirting around the Mekiv Caverns, dodging bandits on the Luon Highway, cutting through Domina, out across rolling hills, past Lumina, then south and east back to Geo. That's a vast simplification of her problems, of course – nearly getting abducted by wiescracking pirate-wannabe penguins in Mekiv, winding up paying some swindling rabbit a ridiculous amount of Lucre for a map of questionable accuracy in Domina, and getting interrogated on the road by an irritible Jumi that made her long for the polite, if sometimes rambunctious, Esmeralda back at the Academy. However, those are largely beside the point of the story, and many are tales for another time.   
Suffice to say, she made it back to Geo on the evening of Dryad day, a full week after she had set out on a supposedly short quest. After the long trip, her first impulse was to leave Mephianse to his experiments for an hour or so and get a cup of coffee; however, familiar snatches of song from the cafe made her change her mind, and find a few side alleys around the cafe just to be sure Gilbert didn't see or follow her. She saw a surprising amount of students wandering the streets, but didn't really care to question any of them, and most of them sensed the dark cloud of gloom and irritation following her and knew better then to distract her from her chosen purpose.   
She slammed the library door open on her way back down to the secret door yet again. Thesenis, in a corner of the library, looked up. "Oh dear. Another setback?"   
There was a long stream of unintelligible muttering, probably kept unintelligible due to the pair of students in the lower part of the library listening in – Kathinja didn't care to teach them any of those particular words. "....#@# Mephianse sent me to the frippin' Underworld, and I got to walk across half of Fa'Diel to get back here..." She stormed down the stairs, the two students staying well clear of her path.   
"Oh dear – the Underworld? That sounds a little drastic, even for Mephianse. Well, it's good to see you back. I'll be in the library working on an experiment should you decide to leave via that door again." Thesenis turned back to the large boiling cauldron she was working in, a table next to her spread with locks of various colored hair. Kathinja somewhat realized that Nunuzac was at a back table floating over an open tome,but didn't really care at this point.   
The door opened for the third time that week, then shut. Upon reaching the gargoyles, they didn't even get a chance to move before Kathinja snarled, "Don't even start. Just open the damn door and let me through - *again*.", causing them to open the door in no small hurry. Just past the door, she took a deep breath and bolted down the corridor dodging the gauntlet of traps yet again, snarling a stream of curses all the way. She easily made the last jump this time - *finally* - and managed to dart across the skeleton's chamber before the doors on the opposite side could shut. New suits of armor connected to face her, then fell back apart after briefly facing the rather enraged half-basilisk. (This confirmed rumors among students that Kathinja could even scare automatons when angry.) The double doors were blown off their hinges by a rather excessive explosive spell.   
She didn't even wait for the flames and smoke to clear, stalking into the room through a veil of flames and smoke, eyes glowing enough to pierce the smoke easily, which all four of the assembled students took as a cue to hide behind whatever large objects presented themselves. The summoning circle was ablaze with sorcerous white flames tracing the lines and runes on the ground, as the smoke from the candles coiled about to form a wall of thin smoke around the circle, the thick smell of the dragon's blood incense filling the room. The crystal array on the pedestal in front of Mephianse was ablaze with black energy. He turned to face his fellow professor.   
"You're too late, Kathinja! The summoning is complete, and the demon will be arriving any moment now!"   
An aura of reddish power was forming around her, a circle of flames on the ground around her feet. "I. Don't. CARE! Nunuzac's going to be taking over your classes for some time after this one, Mephianse..." A collection of small fireballs appeared in the air around her, then shot toward Mephianse in a barrage that obscured the taller sorceror in a conflagaration of flames and smoke. When it cleared, he still stood, unaffected, an impossibly strong breeze looping around him and coiling obediently around his hand. Kathinja side-stepped a few paces away from the door, around the chamber, but still careful to not get the circle between herself and Mephianse – a stray spell in an active summoning circle was a recipe for disaster; not only could it call something you didn't mean to summon, it guaranteed that whatever came would be completely out of your control. Mephianse cast the serpent of wind at his rival; despite her attempt to call a shield of flames, it blasted her back into the wall.   
As she stood up, the circle blazed brighter, the white flames leaping almost to the cieling then dimming down to near-nothing – mere thin lines on the ground. The smoke and flames from the candles and braziers swirled in a maelstrom around the circle, and at its center a black tornado was forming; as it grew larger, the storm of flames and smoke thickened to hide it, as the crystal array on the pedestal sent a beam straight up through the rock, creating a small pillar of black energy that shot up to the sky on the outskirts of Geo, which flared then died away as the Stygian cyclone began to calm. The students peered out from their hiding places to watch the new spectacle.   
"The demon has come!"   
The smoke cleared away, revealing possibly the last thing either of them had ever expected.   
If it truly was a demon, he was taking a human form, or else no kind of demon they'd ever heard of; he seemed depressingly...human. Not even the occasionally outlandish humans of Fa'Diel, either, but flat normal. He was as tall as Kathinja, with shoulder-length purple hair and straight-cut bangs, dressed in a dark, nearly black purple cloack with blue lining, a yellow turtleneck, and loose black breeches. In one hand he loosely carried a plain wooden staff, its only adornment a rather large red crystal clutched in the crooks of the two branches at the top. The man didn't look any older than late twenties. He was looking around the room as if appraising it – or at least, seemed to be, since his eyes were closed.   
After the strange person had scanned the room fully, he turned to face Kathinja and Mephianse, who were standing side by side in stunned silence at the edge of the circle.   
"Ah, you must be the one who summoned me!" He seemed to be looking at Mephianse, more utterly cheerful than anything else either of them had ever seen. "You actually managed to surprise me with that one – this is quite a bit farther than even I'd normally roam!" He seemed far too amused to be annoyed in the slightest.   
Kathinja gave Mephainse a bewildered glance. "That's your demon?" Mephianse shrugged, in an equal amount of shock and confusion.   
"Oh, I'm sorry, I haven't introduced myself, have I? How impolite of me. I am Xelloss, the Trickster Priest." He bowed, that same cheerful smile still written all over his face.   
Silence.   
"I'd love to stick around and find out why you called me here, but I'm afraid I have a large amount of unfinished business to take care of, and I'll have to be going! Bye bye!" He waved cheerfully and vanished, the light on the circle dying down to nothing, the candles and flames in the braziers going out in an instant.   
The chamber could've been called a still life for a full fifteen minutes after the circle died, as not even a breeze stirred in the room; the only sign that the students and two professors were alive was the occasional blink. The stillness was finally broken as Kathinja slumped forward.   
"Why do I even bother? It seems like the more trouble I go through to keep you from finishing some apparently hideously destructive experiment, the more harmless it is!"   
"....right. Students, back to the classroom. I want a two page report on what you learned by Gnome Day." There was a chorus of groans and whines from the three children, who griped all the way out the side passage. "Shall we head back up ourselves?" He waved toward the door, offering Kathinja to go ahead.   
"Ah Hell. Why not." She started out the door, complaining as she walked. "You're hopeless, you know that? I wound up racing across half of Fa'Diel twice, getting banished to the Underworld, lost, interrogated, swindled, singed, stabbed at, half-drowned, and generally annoyed, for nothing."   
"Well, then I accomplished something at least – you managed to see a great deal of the land, correct?"   
She glared back at him, prompting Mephianse to suddenly find a very interesting crack in the wall. He doubted Kathinja would turn him to stone or anything at this point, but didn't care to take any chances. Besides, she had been known to slip in the past, especially when she was upset.   
"Humph. Do you know that Shadoles in the Underworld are twice as obnoxious as Shadoles when they're on the surface?"   
"It makes sense. They always struck me as arrogant little bastards."   
"If one more person calls me "Newly-Dead", I'll stone them." She glared back at him again, clearly driving home the point that he was the one responsible for it all.   
"You had quite an adventure."   
She saw through the weak attempt at changing the subject. "I'll get you for this. Some day, some how, I will get you for this."   
"You said that last time."   
"And I'll get you for that one too. One of these days, you're gonna have Hell to pay, at the rate you're racking up bad karma on my scale."   
"Whatever you wish." He added sarcastically, "I await that day with bated breath."   
"Humph." 

*Noon, Gnome Day*   
Two days later, Kathinja was sitting in a chair at the open-air tavern/cafe in the fruit market. Several students meandered around the area aimlessly. It was a school day, of course, but the students had decided to boycott school after a week of Thesenis and Nunuzac teaching *EVERY* class; the three students who had been spared that fate were boycotting on account of Mephianse's two page report assignment. Mephianse was in his office at a loss, Nunuzac was grumpily warming a bench in the library (as much as a floating noncorporeal magic circle could), Thesenis was the last person they wanted trying to get the students to come back, and Kathinja just didn't care at this point. After spending the entire weekend skulking about Geo studiously avoiding her would-be paramour, she had finally given in to frustration and gone to the open air market, taking up a table with a tall mug of coffee; it was somewhat uncharacteristically mixed with a few shots of creme alcohol. Barely three feet away was Gilbert, who had been overjoyed to see her come slumping into the market that morning, uttterly blind to all the little signals that she just wanted to be left alone. She had spent the morning half-heartedly trying to make him understand that she just wanted him to go as far away as possible and never come within ten miles of her again. He wasn't getting the message, and she was feeling so burned out that she didn't really have the energy to protest more strongly, or do something drastic. (Although at this rate, it was only a matter of time before the citizens of Geo found a new centaur statue adorning the streets.)   
So, there she sat, sipping on stronger coffee than usual in more ways than one, watching her truant students wander about the market on a school day, being hit on by a lovestruck equine bard who was spouting platitudes while coming as close to kneeling beside her as a centaur could.   
"The love I feel when I gaze into your eyes is like nothing I've ever felt before..."   
She didn't even look up from her coffee. "That's not love, that's preiliminary petrification. I'm half-basilisk." *Goddess give me the patience and sanity to survive this ordeal without going on a destructive rampage...*   



End file.
